Father of five creates top mobile allergy app

Got food allergies and need to find a place to eat, fast? There’s an app for that.

Thanks to Paul Antico, founder of AllergyEats.com, allergy sufferers or parents of kids with a food allergy can readily find dining options on the road, on vacation, or right down the street.

For the past two years since its launch, AllergyEats.com has functioned as a comprehensive online guide to allergy-friendly restaurants across the nation, with over 600,000 restaurants in its database. The corresponding smartphone application, which debuted last August, makes it even easier for users to search for food on the go. Last month, the AllergyEats app, which is free to download, received a big honor: About.com’s 2012 Readers’ Choice Awards named it the “Best Food Allergy App.”

To Antico, a Cohasset resident and father of five, three of whom have a food allergy, this is a pretty big deal.

“I was excited to get the award, and to be nominated,” the AllergyEats founder said. “In two years, we’ve established ourselves as the go-to resource [for diners with a food allergy]. This opportunity will help us expand.”

Expansion is key for the AllergyEats website and app in order to have a greater influence on restaurants nationwide, Antico explained: “For the community, the more it grows, the better.”

The mobile app is a natural extension of the AllergyEats website, said Antico. “When you’re traveling, and need to find a restaurant here, it makes sense.” Besides, the founder continued, as computer technology moves further away from personal computers toward tablet-based platforms, apps are, essentially, the future.

“I always knew I wanted to do it,” Antico said of creating a corresponding app for the AllergyEats website, adding that he has heard through his business dealings that, “In five years, every website is going to be an app. For food allergies, it had to be done.”

Antico’s work with AllergyEats led to his appointment on two allergy boards of directors: the Asthma Allergy Foundation of America (AAFA) along with its New England chapter (AAFANE).

According to the AAFA, while 3-4 percent of children have allergic reactions or sensitivities to food that they may outgrow by age four, only 1-2 percent have a true food allergy. The same small percentage of adults have a true food allergy. But the total number of food allergy sufferers in the U.S. alone is 15 million, according to foodallergy.org; 6 million of these are children.

There are eight foods that cause 90 percent of food-allergy reactions: dairy, eggs, wheat, soy, peanuts, tree nuts, fish and shellfish.

The journey toward AllergyEats began when Antico was frustrated one night driving around the area looking for a place to take his two boys to dinner. Not only did he have to deal with the usual Saturday night dinner rush, making it difficult to get seated anywhere — Antico also had to work around his sons’ food allergies.

A former Fidelity financial analyst and mutual fund manager, Antico said that it’s his nature to problem solve.

“I saw a need for something. With my background, and in my own frustration, I thought, ‘I can solve that,’ and there’s a business opportunity now.’”

Antico left Fidelity in 2008 to pursue independent ventures, including his allergy guide brainchild.

“The idea came to me six years ago, and I started [AllergyEats] four years ago, the week after I left Fidelity,” Antico recalled. While the business venture has yet to return much of a profit – “It’s been all cost, zero revenue so far,” the founder said – Antico said that he is in this for the greater good.

“It could succeed for the [food allergy] community and fail for me financially, or it works for the community and could become a profitable venture. It would be nice if it makes a return at some point, but it will only make money if it succeeds for the community.”

But the AllergyEats founder doesn’t seem too concerned about the profits.

“The irony is that, ultimately, I want the site to go under because there’s no longer a need for it.”

Antico’s hope as an allergy advocate is that, one day, restaurants everywhere will be so cognizant of the various food allergies, they will be fully prepared to cater to food allergic customers. AllergyEats functions as a portal for folks to rate restaurants and share their experiences; Antico also runs a blog section of the site where he and other AllergyEats bloggers regularly review places, often putting the pressure on restaurants that don’t meet up to their standards.

Antico said that it’s nothing personal: “I dig them constantly,” he said of certain casual dining chains. “My single goal is I want everyone to get better.”

AllergyEats, as an app and a website, serves a dual purpose to both help the food allergic community find suitable dining options and to educate restaurants that may not be up to par on their allergy-free food options. In turn, restaurants that do strive to cater to this specific need rely on the site to spread the word and attract more customers.

Some establishments are so confident, in fact, that they pass out an index card with the AllergyEats logo, website link and mobile barcode reader (which customers can scan to download the app on their iPhone or Android device) encouraging customers to use AllergyEats to rate their service.

“We’re trying to get more restaurants to carry the card,” Antico said. “We have it because it brings people to the site; plus the restaurant knows it’s going to get higher ratings and know it’s going to do well… It opens up possibilities for them.”

The major goal of AllergyEats, Antico said: “We want to help restaurants that want to get better at this.”

Smartphone users all over the U.S. can utilize the AllergyEats app on the go. But what happens when they need to find allergy-friendly food overseas? Will AllergyEats make an app for that?

Antico said that while he owns the Canadian web domain and could eventually create an AllergyEats site for that country, he is not so sure about going international just yet — although he has had a number of requests.

“I’ve gotten requests for Canada, the U.K., Australia, Israel, Egypt,” Antico listed. “In the long term, it would be great. I’d love to do it, and it might happen. But in the U.S. alone, we’ve got 600,000 restaurants [rated so far] and over 15 million food allergic individuals.”

In the meantime, Antico hopes to expand AllergyEats to include reviews of and guides for schools, hotels, airports and resorts. The first piece of that plan is the AllergyEats micro site for Disney World.

Antico said he launched the Disney section of his site because, “For many people, Disney is the first place you take your kids out to eat. They have that reputation — it’s the place to go. The whole culture at Disney… everything is always exactly perfect,” Antico explained. “They know how to treat people and figure out how to accommodate you. Some restaurants you go to say, ‘Here’s what you can eat.’ Disney asks, ‘What do you want?’”

And the look on a child’s face when he or she is asked what they want, Antico said, “is amazing. Disney is fantastic; it’s the gold standard.”

The short-term goal for AllergyEats, then? Raising national awareness, both for the site and for food allergies in general.

“We have a great, great presence in eastern Mass., but there are a lot of people who don’t know about it, even in our best market,” Antico said. “How do we reach 15 million people?”

One way is to send brochures to allergists, “the one place where all food allergic people go,” explained Antico.

To keep AllergyEats users coming back, the site offers special discounts for diners who mention AllergyEats at participating restaurants.

For all of its successes, including national attention from the recent About.com award, Antico said that he is always striving for more.

“Fidelity had a phrase from the Japanese term ‘kaizen,’ which means ‘continuous improvement,’” he said. “Over the past few years, we’ve made improvements from user comments. We need to know what people want.”

Another goal, said Antico, is to raise the AllergyEats apps’ popularity as an iTunes download. “We want the app to be higher rated on iTunes and bring people to the site,” he said. “Most importantly, we want to keep the users coming back.”

AllergyEats has received numerous endorsements from food, health and allergy organizations, including the AAFA, Gluten Intolerance Group, and Mass. Restaurant Association. For more information, visit www.AllergyEats.com

Food Allergy with Bill & Sheila

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